


You Have Only To Ask

by PlagueSimulators



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Complicated Personal Identity, Heavy Angst, Hopeful ending?, I'll own up to it, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, References to Brainwashing, The Qun (Dragon Age), You: leader of the Beresaad. Me: a leader of the mage rebellion. Our history: fraught, post Inquisition, ten years of exchanging letters and carefully avoiding politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlagueSimulators/pseuds/PlagueSimulators
Summary: The Warden and the Arishok meet again in the mountains near Haven. A conversation neither of them wants to have follows.
Relationships: Sten/Male Warden, Sten/Warden (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 1





	You Have Only To Ask

When the Warden Commander spoke again- Mateu said, "I loved you, Sten."

The Arishok would not let his eyes stray from the white sheath of the Frostbacks. He let the silence speak a few of its own impenetrable words. "You cannot doubt my admiration, kadan." Speaking was as painful as drawing a knife from one's stomach. He let it sit where it was.

Mateu worried his hand over his mouth, and lowered it to grip the railing. The bones of his knuckles stood out prominent as rigging through a taut mast. The Arishok would not let his eyes stray from the white sheath of the Frostbacks.

Maybe Sten would have.

"You know what I meant, Sten." His voice was somehow quieter.

"No." The Arishok, leader of the beresaad, pillar of the triumvirate, turned his body to face the cold.

It had been long years since the Fifth Blight. He had forgotten how the Southern wind burned.

Mateu was silent another long minute. The Arishok sought to count the seconds, one rolling after the other like feet in a march, like beads on a chain, like the Commander's near silent Chant on a mountainside not so far from here. He scowled, and started his count again.

"I don't know what good it does, if it's- I still feel like I don't know you." The words sounded as if Mateu had withdrawn his own dagger from his stomach.

The Arishok hummed. "In a manner, you do not. I am not Sten, Commander, no more than you are Warden Lieutenant, or mage apprentice, or orphan of Cumberland."

"It doesn't go away. I don't forget, Sten- unless they have made you."

The Arishok jolted, and turned. Mateu was gripping the railing hard. The white tracery of the Taint on his cheek had inflamed black at the edges, souring his corrupted eye into more pupil than iris or white. It did not detract from the wrought iron pain on his face. The manner in which he looked at Sten, as if trying to shear ice off a mountain. Or to peel armor off the Qunari he had just thrown into the dust of Haven. 

No, he had been smiling then. Sten had failed to report that detail. It surged up sometimes, until it was almost on his tongue. As if the Arishok had any use for how a Southern bas grinned with all of his teeth, whether they were clean or bloodied. Neither the Arishok then, or the one now. What he might have use for was how a Southern bas leader spoke of the inner workings of the Qunari.

The Ariqun certainly might. He shelved the thought.

"No one has made me do anything, kadan."

The Warden's face flinched, and then soured. He looked hardly convinced. When he took his step forward, the Arishok did not move away. Mateu would not attack him. The man had spared half the people who tried to kill him. Sten knew this, but the Arishok also knew that it had been many years, and the antaam had come to the South.

He still could not move away. Did not. Mateu touched his wrist, and his hand was rough and cold.

"You know I never would." He was looking up with that ruined eye, blood vessels swollen and skin gray around it, and that was still easier to look back into than the other one. "I- have missed you. Do you- you know what I mean, Sten." He was asking, this time.

The Arishok was not Sten. "I am not Sten."

Mateu briefly shut his eyes, and turned his head half away. "Whatever your name is, whatever you do, I will still love you."

The Arishok wanted to look at the mountains again. Sten wanted to tilt Mateu's chin up with his hand. Instead he considered the grey in the Warden's hair. "Is that a threat, kadan?"

"I don't think I could tell you to do anything." Rueful.

The Arishok snorted, and forgot himself. "I followed you up a mountain, through the Fade, through Tevene ruins and into battle with an Archdemon, Mateu." He paused. "You returned Asala to me, and saved my life within the Qun. My _self_. You cannot-" He stopped.

Mateu's face was tight with a warring grief and bitter humor. "Yes. I did." The knife of his voice was no mercy. "I believe you, Sten." And more to himself, "I am trying to."

There was no Sten. There could not be, he had served his purpose. He was trying to believe, here, back in this land of cold and poverty and Andrastian barbarism.

It did not sit right that the best part of the South he had found was what made him falter.

Mateu’s voice was a fraying rope. "Please don't do this."

"I cannot promise you anything, kadan." He inhaled, and his voice dropped. "Do not ask me to."

When the Commander raised his knuckles to his lips, he could not move. The words jostled and fell to the ground like birds shot from the sky. Mateu lowered the Arishok's hand a breath from his mouth. And only held it.

**Author's Note:**

> Another snippet I'll likely revisit when I write the full timeline of Mat as Hero of Ferelden.  
> Yes they've been pining for more than a decade. Yes I actually plan a happy and hopeful ending to this timeline. Yes the only completed pieces I have are sad. Someday we will attain happiness.


End file.
